


best laid plans

by 101places



Series: and they were ROOMMATES [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No SHIELD (Marvel), Bobbi Morse (mentioned) - Freeform, Gen, Lance Hunter (mentioned) - Freeform, Phil Coulson (mentioned) - Freeform, its just not shield. probably, well kinda. theres still a shady government org
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 16:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/101places/pseuds/101places
Summary: Daisy Johnson, or 'Skye' as she's currently calling herself, waits for a phone call.( AKA: Daisy's backstory in an AU that no one asked for but continues to exist )





	best laid plans

**Author's Note:**

> originally daisy's backstory oneshot in this au was like 4k words long and i was only at where she joined the rising tide lmao dfhfdh it REALLY got away from me & was a lot more convoluted. i think this streamlines it a lot better
> 
> this fanfic is part of a collection of one-shots set in a weird-ass no-shield au where bobbi & simmons are roommates as are hunter & fitz. i strongly recommend reading at least 'accidental, temporary kidnappings' first for context but if you dont wanna then youre valid & i hope it still makes sense ffhdsfds

Skye pushed open the door to her room in the dingy bed and breakfast that she was renting, and collapsed onto her bed, wincing as she hit the hard bed board through the thin mattress. All the comforts of home, she thought wryly, pulling herself up and rubbing at her now aching head.

Instead of risk hurting herself further trying to find something actually entertaining in the room, Skye did what she probably should have done as soon as she entered, and turned the TV on. She flicked through a few channels before finding what she wanted, and sat back to watch.

The woman on the screen was standing in a small Scottish village, reporting on a supposed Rising Tide terror attack that had taken place there the previous day. Everything she reported was based on eye-witness accounts- despite living in the age of fastly advancing technology, no one had managed to record any picture or videos of the attack.

It was almost as if someone with a particular knack for hacking had taken precautions, or something.

Satisfied that there was nothing condemning on the news, Skye turned her attention to her phone. If she had played this right, then sometime in the next 24 hours she should be getting a call.

 

.

 

Everything started because she just had to be a rebellious teenager.

Though, really, could anyone blame her? All of her life she’d been tossed from foster home to foster home, the only thing staying with her being her birth name, Daisy. She learnt fast that there was no point in forming emotional attachments, but that didn’t make it hurt any less knowing that there was no one in the world who truly cared for her.

So she’d decided to act out.

The CD store in her local town had poor security. She was just planning on going in, taking something, and going out. No one would notice, and it was just one CD. It would be fine.

Except it wasn’t fine. The clerk saw her pocket the CD and came after her, grabbing her arm to stop her from leaving.

Realising how much trouble she was in, Daisy’s heart had sped up and anxiety had pooled up in her chest, before spreading outwards to the rest of her body, and… exploding out of her hands.

The clerk flew backwards, crashing into the shelf behind him, and didn’t get back up.

Daisy had no idea what had happened, but people were crowding around, staring and pointing, and so she ran.

 

.

 

After that, the explosions didn’t stop. Whenever she was anxious, scared, or in any way distressed everything around her would start to vibrate, and no matter what she did she couldn’t make it stop. She was terrified for herself, but more significantly, she was terrified of herself.

So one day, she packed her bag and ran away from home.

She didn’t have a destination in mind. She was just going to run and run and keep running until she was somewhere far away, where she couldn’t hurt anyone.

This, as it turned out, was a naive idea. Daisy was only 15 years old, and while she had pretty significant street smarts, she didn’t know how to survive by herself with no money or home. Only a few months in to her new life and she was starving and weak, barely able to keep herself going. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of a stranger, taking her to the local hospital, she likely would have died.

After coming to and realising where she was, Daisy was terrified, sure that people would realise what she was and that she would be of danger. However, before she was given the chance to make everything around her explode, a kind doctor began to explain.

He told her about superpowers. About people born with the potential to develop amazing abilities. About Inhumans. About her.

Knowing that she wasn’t alone was the biggest gift that she could have been given.

When she was well enough to leave, that doctor- Lincoln Campbell- paid for her treatment and took her to the Rising Tide- an organisation that worked to uplift Inhumans and other minorities worldwide, albeit using some less-than-legal methods.

There, Daisy was safe. She finally found a home and community that she could call her own, and learnt how to safely control her powers.

For the first time in her life, Daisy felt like she belonged, and she couldn’t have been happier.

 

.

 

Over the next few months, Daisy swiftly climbed the ranks in the Rising Tide, becoming well-regarded and adopting the codename ‘Quake’. However, as she became more trusted and aware of more information, she began to notice some practices within the organisation that she didn’t agree with.

Bringing them to Lincoln didn’t do anything- he was already half-out of the organisation, deciding that he’d prefer to live a regular life- so Daisy found the responsibility for them falling into her lap.

In the end, it was a certain plot that would have endangered a great number of innocent people that drove Daisy into action. She sent an anonymous tip to a government agency that she had recently become aware of, and to her absolute amazement, the agency acted on it and prevented what could have been a tragedy.

With one success under her belt, Daisy began to drop tips more often. While she agreed with the Rising Tide’s principles and the majority of their operations, every organisation has a dark side, and this was how Daisy chose to combat it.

While dropping her tips, she slowly began to communicate more with one agent, a man called Phil Coulson- though he didn’t like it when she called him Phil.

He became her go-to within his agency, and while she knew it was a bad idea, she found herself growing to trust him.

 

.

 

The first time they met face-to-face was during a crisis.

Someone had worked out that someone within the Rising Tide was leaking information, so they used alternate channels that Daisy had been unaware of to plan a morally bankrupt operation, and Daisy only found out about it when it was almost too late.

There wasn’t any time to go through her usual method to contact Coulson, so she turned up at his house in the middle of the night.

To say that he was surprised would be an understatement, but in typical super-spy fashion he kept his reaction under control.

After Daisy had introduced herself and explained the situation to him, he didn’t waste any time in gathering a team to prevent the loss of lives, or deal with the aftermath.

Just barely, the group managed to stop the Rising Tide faction before they were able to hurt anyone, and Daisy ran before anyone had a chance to stop her.

 

.

 

Now aware that she was the source of the leak, her peers at the Rising Tide didn’t seem to be too concerned. By this point she had been a member for a year, and had proved again and again her loyalty to their cause. While some became suspicious of her behaviour, most accepted her sense of morality- some even growing to admire her more for it.

A small group of those who admired her became apparent, and Daisy took them under her wing, forming a specialised team that came to be known as the Secret Warriors.

Daisy was pretty proud of herself over that.

 

.

 

The Secret Warriors took up most of Daisy’s time, but she still managed to find the time to check in with Coulson every now and then. She didn’t really need to anymore- the Secret Warriors were more than able to deal with anyone within the Rising Tide with less than stellar motivations now- but what could she say? She’d grown attached to the man.

She used the secure channel she’d initially created to drop him tips to talk to him when she was bored. She shared unimportant information about the Rising Tide and her life, and found it rather nice to have an outlet.

Every now and then when she was out on a mission with the Secret Warriors, or just somewhere enjoying herself, she’d see something that she thought Coulson would like- some nerd comic, or an antique watch, or a mug with a really awful pun- and she’d buy it, dropping it on his doorstep like a cat.

The day after she left him gifts, he always thanked her in their secure channel.

It was a strange kind of relationship, but Daisy liked it, and she thought that Coulson did, too.

 

.

 

Another year passed before Daisy knew it, and she considered herself a veteran superhero by this point.

She had a lot of experience working with the Secret Warriors, and had worked directly with Coulson’s team a few times since, too. Her life was good.

Then it wasn’t.

 

.

 

Apparently, some extremist members of the Rising Tide hadn’t been apprehended, and had instead jumped ship, so to speak. As they fled, they spoke about Daisy Johnson, and as the stories of her spread, they reached the ears of people that she quickly realised she didn’t want to know of her.

Much of her childhood, Daisy had wondered about her birth parents. She’d never met them, and had often daydreamed of what type of people they were. The reality was terrifying.

Murderers. Monsters. Daisy had never been so scared in her life.

Fearing what would happen to the place she’d called home, and the people she called family, if her birth parents were to find her, Daisy ran, and she didn’t stop.

 

.

 

The UK was a tiny island, really. Out of everywhere in the world, she liked to think that it would take a while before she was found here.

Now using the moniker Skye, and with more life experience to help her manage life without a house and with little income, she felt that maybe things would be alright. She just needed a plan.

She didn’t want to keep running forever. Now that she knew what it was like to have a home, she didn’t want to let that go, but she knew better than to go against her birth parents alone. If they were really what the rumours said, then that wasn’t a fight she was likely to win.

She also wasn’t an idiot. The Secret Warriors wouldn’t be able to help her here- they were vigilantes, and when they fell, there would be no help coming. What might just work, however, was a certain government agency.

Skye had her criticisms of how they operated, but in this instance they were what she needed. Her birth parents may be able to defeat individuals, but they could hardly defeat the institution.

The issue was that she feared her secure channel wasn’t as secure as she had hoped. If she was going to do this, she couldn’t risk anyone finding out her plan early. So she needed another angle.

Her research supplied her with that angle easily- one Miss Bobbi Morse.

Bobbi Morse, previously  _ Agent _ Morse, had ties to Agent Coulson. If Skye played her cards right, then she could get his attention in an alternative way. She just needed to be smart about it.

 

.

 

Jumping in front of a moving vehicle may not be what most people would consider ‘smart’, but it worked.

Morse and her roommate, Simmons, patched her up, giving her a chance to profile them, and Morse a chance to become suspicious of her. Now, she just needed to up her game to make her suspicious enough to reach out to Coulson.

The opportunity for that came in the form of one Lance Hunter, roommate of one of Morse’s friends (and if his comments were anything to go by, her ex…? Skye wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what happened there).

Hunter was known to do anything for money- that was practically his motto. Skye arranged for him to deliver a van to a quiet Scottish town- the van wasn’t really the important part, though. The important part was that Hunter would be left stranded, and would have to call a friend to get himself home.

Taking into account how few friends he actually had, this would leave him calling one Leo Fitz, and from there Skye could make herself known to him, dropping information that he would go on to relay to Morse, and hopefully making her more likely to check in with Coulson.

It was a fool-proof plan.

 

.

 

It was not a fool-proof plan.

Some idiot had brought the van he was supposed to deliver from somewhere particularly shady, presumably to save money, and as a result the local police force had been called to investigate. Paranoid and jumpy, Skye had used her ability, which had only increased the aggression from the police.

It was sheer luck that she’d thought to set up a continuous EMP to protect her identity. She could have so easily been found out there.

With her plan ruined, Skye raced to the van and ran away from the village, ready to leave Hunter an extremely strongly worded review on his website.

...Then she’d heard a noise in the back of her truck, and had turned to see Fitz, wearing a terrified expression.

This wasn’t how she’d wanted things to go, but maybe she could still make things work.

 

.

 

Skye had spent the rest of the evening with Fitz, going so far as to take him to a fairground. It had been pretty fun, really, but more than that, it had given her plenty of time to drop information.

With how shady she had acted, it was only a matter of time before he passed what he’d learnt on.

Only a matter of time before Morse contacted Coulson.

Only a matter of time before Coulson contacted Skye.

Only a matter of time before Skye finally had some good news.

Skye laid back on her bed and clutched her phone, letting the drone of the TV wash over her as she slowly feel into an anxious but hopeful rest.


End file.
